CVE-2016-1240

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 9.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2016-10-03 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-20

Description

The Tomcat init script in the tomcat7 package before 7.0.56-3+deb8u4 and tomcat8 package before 8.0.14-1+deb8u3 on Debian jessie and the tomcat6 and libtomcat6-java packages before 6.0.35-1ubuntu3.8 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the tomcat7 and libtomcat7-java packages before 7.0.52-1ubuntu0.7 on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, and tomcat8 and libtomcat8-java packages before 8.0.32-1ubuntu1.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS allows local users with access to the tomcat account to gain root privileges via a symlink attack on the Catalina log file, as demonstrated by /var/log/tomcat7/catalina.out.

Affected products

Apache Tomcat: 6.0, 7.0, 8.0

References

http://legalhackers.com/advisories/Tomcat-DebPkgs-Root-Privilege-Escalation-Exploit-CVE-2016-1240.html
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/170857/Apache-Tomcat-On-Ubuntu-Log-Init-Privilege-Escalation.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017-0457.html
http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3669
http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3670
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/539519/100/0/threaded
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/93263
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1036845
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-3081-1
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0455
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2017:0456
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201705-09

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